He’d left his newspaper behind, and I tucked it under my arm for Mrs. Moyle. “Being a woman is no excuse for being uninformed”was a favorite slogan of hers. More than a slogan, for my employer had taken it upon herself to teach me reading and writing (beyond what little I’d learned from my mother), saying I wouldn’t be of much use to her if I couldn’t read a list for market or write down a customer’s order.
While I supposed these were good reasons, I also thought she was lonely. We had that in common.
I carried the man’s dishes to the kitchen, brushing crumbs from the plate and emptying the tea strainer before setting them next to the washbasin. Upon opening the teapot to remove the leaves that had stuck inside, I froze.
The Magpie had been a welcome change for me in every way but one. Emptying all those pots, I had begun seeingshapesin the clumps of leaves. Everyday things like candles, or flowers, or crescent moons, but now and then a crown, or sword, or castle.
Sometimes after seeing a thing, I’d hear a bit of gossip that seemed related to it. Like the time I saw a ring in the teapot at a table of young ladies, and after a few days I heard one had become engaged. Another time, the sodden leaves formed a line across the bottom of a large teapot, and a month later we heard that the family was setting sail for America. But once I’d seen a sickle shape in old Lady Rundle’s cup—right before she suffered apoplexy.
I’d chided myself for paying heed to it, yet it kept happening. And try as I might, I could no morenotsee those shapes than I couldnotsmell the gin on my brother, Jack, when he came home from the clay pits (and the tavern) in the evenings.
Inthispot, I saw a magpie, plain as day—tea leaves forming the black feathers, the glazed clay of the pot forming the white. Magpies were news bearers, and Mum used to sing an old nursery rhyme about them:
One for sorrow,
Two for joy,
Three for a girl,
Four for a boy,
Five for silver,
Six for gold,
Seven for a secret never to be told
One for sorrow.Near the magpie was a narrow, pointy shape that I couldn’t see as anything but a knife. Or, by its handle, more like a dagger.
“That’s the last of it, then?” asked Mrs. Moyle, turning from the washbasin, the red in her cheeks deepened by the steamy water.
Blinking away the worrisome thoughts, I replied, “It is, ma’am.”
The skin pricked at the back of my neck as I stuck my hand in the pot and dug out the wet leaves before handing it to her. My fingers trembled as I picked up the towel to begin drying.
Let it go.
But I couldn’t.
“Mrs. Moyle,” I said, trying to keep a lightness in my tone, “did you know that fellow who sat alone by the window this afternoon?”
My employer didn’t miss much, and she looked up sharply. But she answered mildly enough. “I’ve never seen him before. I imagine he was just passing through. Seems we see more strangers in Roche every day.”
“That we do.” Roche had grown with the clay mining in the years since Mrs. Moyle had opened The Magpie using money from the sale of her late husband’s livery business. It was why I’d found work here.
She studied me as I dried a saucer patterned with dog roses. “I’m always dreading the day a young man will catch your eye and steal you away from me, but this one was old enough to be your father.”
I laughed, feeling the color in my cheeks. “Nothing like that, Mrs. Moyle.”
She handed me the clean teapot to dry. “What then? I can see you working something over in your mind.”
I rubbed the pot’s gleaming surface with the towel. “You’ll think me a fool. I think it myself.”
“I’ve met fools aplenty, Mina, and I’ve never counted you among them.”
Sighing, I set the pot on a shelf next to the window. Outside, mist gathered low along the ground in the garden, snaking slowly among the dried-up stalks. Most of Mrs. Moyle’s flowers had withered in the heat of the last couple of weeks, but the red roses still bloomed, and a few sweet, creamy woodbine blossoms dotted the vines growing along the hedgerow in back. The birds were at the haws, and we’d have to pick them soon if we were to have any for jelly.
“Sometimes,” I began slowly, “I see things in people’s teapots. Shapes, or likenesses. It often seems as if those shapes are trying to say something to me.”
